Home » politics » Not all results will be announced by tomorrow night, poll officials say

Not all results will be announced by tomorrow night, poll officials say

The Nation February 1, 2014 1:00 am

Not all election results will be announced or known by the end of tomorrow, election officials have said.

Ballots for party-list MPs and constituency MPs will be counted at each polling booth that manages to open and close at 3pm. However, if polling stations are forced to close before 3pm due to anti-government protests, ballots will not be counted.

The results of the count at polling stations able to stay open until 3pm will then be amalgamated to find out the winner of the constituency.

Under normal procedures, the votes from each of polling station in the 375 constituencies are counted and then announced later. But in this election procedures will differ, as it is anticipated that a number of polling stations are likely to be disrupted by anti-government protests.

In addition, around 2 million voters failed to cast votes last Sunday during advance voting. As a result, a re-run for advance voting will take place on February 23 and some constituencies will have to wait for those results before all their votes can be tallied.

The 125 winning party-list MPs will be announced once all votes from the approximately 99,000 polling stations have been counted.

The vote count from each polling station will provide information as to how many votes each candidate gets, which party has taken the lead in the party-list system, the number of ballots in which the "none of the above" box - or "no vote" - was chosen, the number of valid and invalid ballots, and the overall voter turnout.

Political parties, who joined the race, will also send observers to report the vote count back to their parties.

During the day, the Election Commission will provide updates on which polling stations remain open and which are forced to close, as well as the polling stations where ballots can be counted - although the vote count will not be announced until all votes are in.